Hey.. the cam worked! December 5, 2002 at 2:10 pm
Caught her digging in the yard:
Not sure why she’s digging.. we’ll have to see if she found another ancient buried rawhide stick in the yard.
Category / Uncategorized
The Summer-Cam is online! November 17, 2002 at 6:32 pm
So I’ve got a cheesy webcam setup now… the Summer-Cam.:
It’s simply a cam pointing in my front-yard, and yes, it looks blurry. I wanted to protect it as well as I could so for now it’s in a ziploc bag that’s as sealed as I can get it. 🙂
The software I’m running takes pics at 10 second intervals, and I’m keeping 24 hours worth of pics around.
Elections Suck! October 30, 2002 at 11:50 pm
No, I don’t mean that I don’t like having the power to vote, I just mean that the time before elections in the U.S. sucks ass. It starts a few months before election day, and seems to get exponentially worse as the day approaches…. of course, I’m talking about the ads! All the commercials on TV seem to fit into one of two categories:
1. Ads of the “Candidate A sucks/is stupid/should be in jail…etc.” Then in small type or a quiet whisper, “Paid for by the committee to get candidate B elected”
or
2. Ads of the “I’m here for you… I’ll work my ass off and do my best” type done by people who’s acting skills leave a lot to be desired.. .i.e. you can see through their phony crap from the moment they appear on TV.
One of the worst campaign mottos (for lack of a better word) right now has to be Gray Davis’ “Experience you trust. Values you share.” If Davis’ record is “experience you trust” then what the hell would it take for you to want to fire someone? This guy has done blatent taking of bribes (what else can you call passing things for people immediately after they donate to your political fund?) and blowing some major problems like the power issue. Anyone that votes for him based on his past experience is a bona-fide moron.
Now the values part… while I don’t agree with much of what he stands for, I can at least respect people for voting for him based on them. If you agree with him, then at least that’s a reason to vote for him. But experience… sheesh.
This election has to have the worst choices for governor I’ve ever seen. None is the best for the job, it’s a case of voting for the least horrid candidate. And what’s with all the propositions every year for more money for schools that they promise is really going to only go to the schools this time… even though every other one in every last election that’s passed seems to have either failed to do any good (dumping more money into education isn’t the answer) or didn’t really go to schools like they said. Anyone remember prop MM? That one immediately jumps to mind as there are still signs at local schools touting work due to that one… so why even more money so soon when MM is still in the works?
The school bonds and such always seem to be funded by taxing property (i.e. homeowners). IMNSHO.. if it’s tax that only property owners will pay.. then only property owners should be able to vote on it. Of course the same people that don’t own property and are always immediately for such bonds, are usually the same ones that bitch when their rent/lease is increased. Hello? Why do they think they suddenly have to pay more? It’s because their landlord now has higher taxes to pay (which they voted for) which they’re going to pass onto thei tenents whenever they can… duh! Think next time.
I also wish there was some sort of prerequisite for voting on propositions. There needs to be some way to determine that people actually understand what voting for or against actually means before they can vote on it.. too many people seem to have no clue what a proposition actually means, but will vote one way or the other based on what someone told them, or because that’s what someone on TV told them to do. I know that personally, if I dont understand a prop… I don’t vote on it! I’d rather not have a vote count toward or against a proposition that I don’t understand (thereby voting “neither”) then vote for/against something when I don’t even know what that vote means.
Lastly… exercise your right, and get out there on election day! If you don’t vote, then STFU! Don’t go out and vote? Then you have no right to complain!
Finally October 27, 2002 at 2:12 pm
So the site is back online after being down for a couple days… and I decided to switch to MovableType too.
I learned a few things:
1. Don’t try using the gcc 3.x sse and 3dnow [Ed: That’s see,387.. not sse,3dnow.. oops] fpmath extensions… of course the docs mention this, but I didn’t bother reading that first.
2. Really don’t use those options when building something that’s kind of important… like, say.. glibc. D’oh!
Anyway, I don’t know how often I’ll update the ramblings posted here, but I do like this software a lot more then phpwebsite.
Can people really be this dumb? July 2, 2002 at 6:03 pm
Another repost… this time from July 2nd, 2002
The following occurred a few months ago while I was purchasing a few movies and some software at Fry’s Electronics:
First warning sign
After waiting in line for a few short minutes, I moved to a cashier and placed my pending purchases on the counter. The helpful clerk scanned in the items and told me the total. She then ran my debit card, and then had a puzzled look on her face. She asked the clerk next to her for help, who told her that her computer had frozen. He suggested she reboot it… which she didn’t know how to do. After rebooting, it allowed her to scan the items in again…. and again froze when trying to process the card. After another 2 trys, it wouldn’t even reboot, and all of the cashiers were reporting the same problem. At this point, I probably should’ve just left.
She’s got a calulator and sample sheet… this should be easy, right?
Now that the floor manager realizes the worst has happened and that the computers are down (God NO!) everyone goes into what we’ll call Manual mode. In manual, every cashier is given a small pouch which contains a carboned ledger, photocopied sample sheet, and a tiny calculator.
Thinking this can’t be hard, as she’s got instructions, I decide to wait it out and get my merchandise. I know I’m in trouble when she can’t even start filling out the ledger, nevermind it has nice labels and she’s got that little “cheat sheet” to go along with it. I actually started showing her what to do… which went ok for a few minutes, but she kept writing the prices and amounts on the wrong lines (i.e. she wrote three lines of the items, then the prices all shifted down a row… so they didn’t line up).
Uh oh! Math’s involved now!
Next came time to add up the prices. The items I’d bought were priced (IIRC) $24.99, $16,99, $14.99 and $9.99. I quickly added up in my head (25+17+15+10 is 67, minus 4 cents is $66.96) a total… granted, I’m probably a little better at math then the average person, but this isn’t rocket science here. She proceeds to add up the totals on a scratch piece of paper (yes… she ignored the calculator in her hand) and came up with something like $66.82. I corrected her, and had to explain about 5 times what the proper price was… which she finally agreed on. She actually corrected it once… and was still wrong.
Now it was time to add on tax! Woah.. we were in real trouble now. She had absolutely no idea how to start this. I told her, “just multiply the total by .0775 to get the tax..” and she looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. The helpful clerk next to her (who’d already completed a full transaction during this time) explained it to her as well… it was at that moment that the computers suddenly came back up. Even though we were about 95% of the way through the transaction… she did it all over from scratch in the computer (although I’m willing to bet it was faster that way).
Conclusion… or whatever.
My question is this: How can someone with such a complete lack of basic math/money skills function in today’s society? Even worse, why the hell was she hired on as a cashier? What really scared me was that maybe 3 clerks were able to complete a transaction in the 15 or so minutes the computers were down (yeah… I should’ve left… or just filled out the damn ledger myself).
I’ll admit I’m biased… I used to work at the SD Zoo way back when.. and ran snack carts several times. We’re talking no register: only a crappy calculator with sticky keys and a bag of money. I used to be able to do $1200 of business in a day have less then a dollar discrepency… which I guess was unheard of as I was immediately labeled the “cart dude” after the first time I did it. Man, if I’d only known… 😉
Got myself a new dog… March 6, 2002 at 12:01 pm
Repost of a post from March 6th, 2002 on my old site
Finally went to the Humane Society and got myself a dog.
You can see pics of her here
I’d been wanting a dog ever since I bought my house, as I’ve had dogs my entire life up until then. I’d been looking at websites like 1-800-save-a-pet.com, sdhumane.org, etc for awhile, and found a really great sounding dog. I called the pound on thursday and left a message to see if she was still there, and found out about an hour before leaving work on Friday that she’d just been adopted.
However, I’d planned to go down even if she wasn’t there, so I went.. and ended up finding a great dog anyway.
Funny thing is, I had been checking for dogs at the pound, and went to the humane society instead… I’ve lived in this town my entire life, and never realized that there was a separate pound down off of Morena. I’d always assumed the humane society building was the pound, but my sister set me straight.